The story of Lou D’Annunzio and how a scout shaped Detroit Tigers’ history

Detroit Tigers Catcher Bill Freehan puts the tag on Lou Brock of the St. Louis Cardinals at the plate in the fifth inning of fifth game of World Series at Tiger Stadium in Detroit, Oct. 10, 1968. Brock was attempting to score on Julian Javier's single to left, but Tigers' Willie Horton fired to the plate in time.(AP Photo)

Bill Freehan, left, stands with Lou D’Annunzio, a scout that helped sign many of the top talents for the Detroit Tigers over the years. (Submitted Photograph)

**This is the first in a three-part series on how professional scouting has changed over the years, and how it has stayed the same. Check back tomorrow for part two of the series**

It was Game 5 of the 1968 World Series. The Detroit Tigers trailed the St. Louis Cardinals, 3-2, in the fifth inning.

Future Hall of Famer Lou Brock, who had been destroying the Tigers with his extraordinary speed, was on second base.

Julian Javier lined a single to left field. Detroit’s Willie Horton fielded the ball cleanly. His throw was on target.

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Catcher Bill Freehan blocked home plate, tagging out Brock, who elected not to slide.

The snap shot will forever show Brock’s left foot a fraction of an inch short of the plate.

The Tigers were down three games to one, and not only rallied to win the game, but the World Series for the first time in 23 years.

It was a seminal moment in the history of Detroit, not only in regard to baseball, but social significance.

The Tigers’ championship helped heal a city devastated by riots during the summer of 1967.

And the ’68 Tigers’ championship probably would not have happened without Lou D’Annunzio, the scout, who signed Horton and Freehan during the era before the Major League Baseball Draft was implemented in 1965.

“It was different before the draft,” Horton said. “Scouts didn’t evaluate players as much as discover them. I was 13 years old when I first met Lou D’Annunzio, years before I talked to any other scout or even knew what a baseball scout was. I didn’t see him as a scout, just somebody who cared about me.

“He was always there. At my games. Walking me home from school and just talking about baseball and life. Lou became like family.”

Horton was a catcher during his youth. The New York Yankees, in the midst of one of their greatest eras during the 1950s and early 1960s, sent Horton a catcher’s mitt as his legend grew at Detroit’s Northwestern High School.

“The Red Sox offered more money than the Tigers,” said Horton, who received a $50,000 signing bonus. “But turning down Lou and the Tigers would have been turning down family. It wasn’t going to go down that way.”

There was no scout school to teach Lou D’Annunzio. Nor extensive formulas to evaluate players based on mathematics.

Born in 1900, he was a sandlot player in Detroit. At 5-foot-5 and slight of build, he was too small to garner the attention of major league teams and did not play organized baseball.

He worked in an automobile factory, playing baseball at night in Detroit’s thriving sandlot leagues. Eventually, he started managing teams in the 1930s.

Detroit was one of the top areas in the country for baseball talent at the time. The best players played for Lou D’Annunzio, who scoured the city to find them.

One of his discoveries was Hall of Fame pitcher Hal Newhouser, whose statue sits beyond the outfield wall at Comerica Park, along with a likeness of Horton, among six all-time great Tigers’ players.

D’Annunzio filed this as part of his report to the Tigers about Newhouser, just 15 at the time: “He’d commit mayhem to win a ball game.”

Future major league pitchers Billy Pierce (211 MLB wins) and Ted Gray also played for D’Annunzio. So did first baseman John McHale, who eventually became the Tigers’ general manager in the 1950s. He was also the general manager of the Braves and the founding president of the Montreal Expos.

D’Annunzio’s ability to evaluate top players didn’t go unnoticed by Tigers’ scouting director Wish Egan. D’Annunzio worked as a so-called “bird dog” scout for the Tigers’ for 20 years. “Bird dog” is a term used for a part-time scout. They were especially prevalent at the time.

D’Annunzio continued to work in the factory until the mid-1950s when the Baltimore Orioles offered him a full-time position to scout.

It was during his five years with the Orioles, D’Annunzio proved his value most to the Tigers. He sealed his status as one of the game’s greatest scouts by signing pitcher Milt Pappas out of Detroit’s Cooley High School in 1957.

The signing of Pappas was a classic example of how the top scouts garnered success before the draft.

This is an account from The Sporting News in 1961 about the Pappas’ signing:

“D’Annunzio practically lived with the Pappas family as Milt approached graduation day at Detroit Cooley High School. He paid particular attention to Pappas’ grandmother. ‘We talked half-Greek and half-Italian,’ D’Annunzio related. ‘When Milt signed with the Orioles, his grandmother hugged me and said we got him.’ ”

Pappas was an All Star by 22 and won 209 MLB games. He was the player the Orioles traded to Cincinnati for Hall of Fame outfielder Frank Robinson following the 1965 season. It began the salad days for the Orioles during the late 1960s and early 1970s, which included World Series titles in 1966 and 1970.

The Tigers, their farm system subjected to much media criticism especially after losing out on Pappas to the Orioles, brought D’Annunzio back as scouting supervisor for Michigan, Illinois and Northern Indiana. He was 60 at the time.

It was January, 1961. The Tigers signed both Horton and Freehan later that year. D’Annunzio started tracking Freehan at 15, and maintained close contact with him though his college years at the University of Michigan.

Freehan was second and Horton fourth in American League MVP voting in 1968.

Bill Schudlich played first base at Michigan State in the late 1950s and early 1960 before embarking on a long career as a scout with the Tigers, including as director, and Indians, his current employer. He is the scout, who recommended and worked extraordinarily hard to sign, future Hall of Fame pitcher John Smoltz out of Lansing Waverly High School for the Tigers.

Schudlich lived two streets away from D’Annunzio in Dearborn for many years.

“Today, everybody knows who the prospects are,” Schudlich said. “There really aren’t leagues anymore. It’s all about showcase events and tournaments and just about evaluating the talent. There are no secrets.

“In Lou’s day, it was also about actually finding players. Everything was so secretive. You never let anybody know who you were interested in.”

When D’Annunzio scouted a game, he wore a suit, a tie and his trademark Fedora hat. Communication was his great strength. He was charismatic and personable. People, especially ball players, just liked him.

“I remember talking to him when I played,” Schudlich said. “He made you feel good. He was easy to talk to, even for a kid. Lou was never part of the pack. He did his own thing, and went his own way. He had this way about him in which he was pleasant to all the scouts, but never let you know what he was thinking.”

Baseball scouts have always been at the bottom of baseball’s food chain in regard to salary. Even as area supervisor - and after he signed such standouts as Newhouser, Pierce, Pappas, Horton and Freehan - D’Annunzio still augmented his income by working for the Dearborn Department of Recreation during the winter months.

D’Annunzio wrote a long and detailed instructional manual about how to play the game. He typed out, page-after-page on a manual typewriter, his thoughts about each player he scouted, which he kept until his dying day in 1988 at age 87.

Because of D’Annunzio, Horton said there were no surprises when he entered professional baseball.

“In the 1960s, being a black ball player presented a lot of unique challenges, especially playing down south for spring training or the minor leagues,” Horton said. “Lou D’Annunzio explained to me exactly what it was going to be like, and had great advice about it, and other challenges young ball players face trying to get to the big leagues.

“It wasn’t like he scouted me and signed me and I never heard from him again. It was the opposite. He was there for me. I always knew it and appreciated him so much.”

D’Annunzio’s presence has been intertwined with the Tigers’ history beyond the ’68 club.

While with the Orioles, he signed Bill Lajoie, an All-American outfielder at Western Michigan University he had been following since his days at Detroit MacKenzie High School.

Although he never reached the major leagues, Lajoie had a long minor league career as a player and eventually became a scout. He was hired by the Tigers after a brief stint with Cincinnati in the late 1960s. D’Annunzio was approaching 70 and ready to move to Florida and take on part-time status. He mentored Lajoie for a year in 1969, before turning over his territory to him.

Eventually Lajoie became scouting director for the Tigers, and from 1974 through 1978, drafted the core of the 1984 World Series champion club – Alan Trammell, Lou Whitaker, Jack Morris, Lance Parrish, Kirk Gibson, Dan Petry, Tom Brookens and Dave Rozema. Another draft pick from those years, Steve Kemp, was traded for All Star center fielder Chet Lemon. Mark Fidrych, who captured the imagination of the country in 1976 with a brilliant and enchanting performance, was a 10th round draft pick by Lajoie in ‘74.

Elevated to general manager, Lajoie traded for reliever Willie Hernandez in spring training of ’84. As closer, he won the American League MVP and Cy Young awards that year.

John McHale Jr, son of the major leaguer and baseball executive D’Annunzio coached and signed in the 1940s, became the Tigers’ team president in the mid-1990s and orchestrated the building of Comerica Park.

Tigers’ owner Mike Ilitch was a minor league player for the Tigers in early 1950s. The scout who signed him: Lou D’Annunzio.

When Ilitch bought the Detroit Red Wings in 1982, team president Jim Campbell sent D’Annunzio a package full of newspaper clippings about the purchase. In the accompanying letter he wrote: “I thought you’d be interested – another one of your ‘boys’ has made a success of himself.”

One scout. Incredible legacy.

About the Author

Pat Caputo has written as a beat writer and sports columnist for The Oakland Press since 1984 and blogs at http://patcaputo.blogspot.com/. Reach the author at pat.caputo@oakpress.com
or follow Pat on Twitter: @PatCaputo98.